By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The National Football League began snooping around Las Vegas back in 2017 to check out Sin City as a place to host its NFL Draft event. Even The Fremont Street Experience and downtown Las Vegas were checked out.
The 2022 Draft might be two years late in Las Vegas because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But all systems are go for a two-pronged approach — an airport hangar-looking structure that has been blinged out with lights, cameras and 1,500 seats for a “Draft Theater” on the east side of the Strip behind the High Roller Observation Wheel and a red carpet stage built in the Bellagio Fountains on the west side of the Strip.
The players will walk the red carpet as it were on the stage built in the Bellagio Fountains and then will be shuttled over to the “Draft Theater,” where they will greet NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and get their selfies.
If you are in a motorized vehicle, you might want to stay away from the Las Vegas Boulevard/Flamingo Road intersection. Flamingo will be closed starting late Wednesday and it will stay closed until Sunday. But Eric Finkelstein, NFL senior director of event operations, noted Flamingo will re-open in the early morning hours from around 12 noon to 6 am each day so that deliveries can be made to the local hotels like the Bellagio and Caesars.
The “Draft Theater” will have 20-seat areas for all 32 teams, which will choose their biggest fans for those seats. In the rear of the “theater,” fans on site for the NFL Experience can stand in the back at the open end of the theater.
The NFL has converted a million square feet of parking lot behind the High Roller wheel into an NFL Draft party site to help amplify a brand during what was usually a more quiet time of the year for the NFL two months after the Super Bowl.
Finkelstein sidestepped providing answers on the number of people the NFL Draft layout is designed to accommodate.
Clark County has been using the general 300,000-600,000 number of visitors for the NFL Draft. It will be interesting to see if other non-NFL visitors decide to stay away from the Strip because they don’t want to deal with the crush of people, traffic congestion and big crowds.
There will be more of a concert-style, party atmosphere in addition to the people sitting in seats watching players’ names called.
PSA